First Friends of New Jersey & New York

First Friends of NJ & NY needs your help.  We are a small nonprofit organization that runs the largest and oldest detention visitation program visiting ICE detainees in 4 NJ jails.  While we visit hundreds of detained immigrants annually, we also pick up just-released friends at jail parking lots and temporarily house them until reuniting them with family members across the USA.

Our challenge is that recent changes in immigration laws have increased the number of immigrants released from jails with nowhere to go and with family members far away.  First Friends is spending thousands of dollars per month buying Greyhound bus tickets and providing released friends with cash for travel expenses to reunite them with family members across the USA. 

We need your support to help pay for bus tickets and travel expenses.  Bus tickets run from $200-$600 per ticket, so we need to raise $12,000 to cover transportation costs for the rest of 2019.

Visit our website at www.firstfriendsnjny.org to learn more.

Thank you for your support!

First Friends of NJ works with detainees and asylum seekers in NJ to bring them hope and dignity. They provide detention center immigrants with services and provisions and seek housing for those released into the community.

Many immigrants are detained indefinitely for months and years with no contact with lived ones or the outside world. When possible financially, First Friends provides these detainees with phone cards to reach their relatives either those they've been separated from here or in the countries they've arrived from.

I'm working directly with First Friends to provide each of the 175 immigrants they work with in New Jersey with a phone card.
Each card is $15. The cards are good for several calls to their families , These immigrants languish in these detention centers with nothing to do all day, they are depressed and hopeless and a call to loved ones - uniting with their family - is a ray of light in their bleak situation.